Byronic
by Vivian Bloodmark
Summary: SEQUEL to "Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines." Gibbs has four days to convince Abby to reconsider the nature of her feelings, before she rekindles an old flame. Charming, gentlemanly Doctor Mallard steps in to help his old friend win Abby's puzzled heart.
1. Off Guard

**Byronic**

**Sequel to "Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines"**

By Vivian Bloodmark

**Author's note: This story can be read as a stand-alone, but it'd greatly enrich your enjoyment of this fic to have first read "Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines." You can find it on my profile page. I'm just sayin'. **

**This'll be the same drill as the first time. Short chapters, frequent updates. If you read, please review! **

**All my best,**

**Vivian**

**Chapter One – Off Guard**

Abby was fixated on her computer screen when she heard the sound of footsteps coming through the door into the lab. It couldn't be Gibbs, she knew, because for one thing, she wasn't ready for him. For another, those were hesitant steps, careful steps, the kind that Gibbs wouldn't have bothered with. There were only a couple of other people who regularly came to visit her down here, and only one of them seemed to have yet to figure out that she could hear him come in. "What's up, McGee?" She asked, not turning around.

McGee jumped. That is, Abby didn't see him jump, focused as she was on her work, but she knew that he probably hadn't expected her to know that he was there, and so he had probably jumped. "Hey, Abs," he muttered, sounding exactly like a man who had just jumped, "am I, uh…interrupting anything?"

"Yes, McGee." Abby allowed herself a few more keystrokes before she turned around in her chair to face him. "You are interrupting the magic of the deductive process, by which I am going to solve Gibbs' case and thus convince him to buy me another Caf-Pow." She gestured to the one that was already on her desk, and added significantly, "it's empty."

McGee grinned. "Ah, but you see," he said, coming forward from the doorway and holding something out towards her, "Like the good, planning-oriented agent I am, I anticipated that." He plunked the brand new, full Caf-Pow he'd brought with him on to Abby's desk. "All the better to get you through the difficult but magical deductive process."

"Aw, McGee…" Abby was touched. She was touched every time McGee brought her a Caf-Pow, even though she had, for several years now, made her preference for that particular caffeinated drink very, very clear. Jumping out of her chair, she came around to give him a quick, two-armed squeeze. "Okay," she said, after letting go, "you've got my attention. What can I do for ya?"

"Well…" McGee seemed to lose a little bit of the confidence that the gift of the drink had helped him gain. Eyeing Abby with some trepidation, he said, "it's not about the case. I mean…it's a personal thing."

Abby shrugged. "Fire away!" she insisted. "Abby would be glad to help you with your…personal problem. But make it quick, Gibbs could be down here any minute. I've been sending him the 'I've got something' vibes for twenty minutes. He should have been here already…"

"Only if you promise not to talk about yourself in the third person like that." McGee, if anything, looked even more worried. "I need you to take this seriously. Man to man. Uh, I mean, man to woman. Me to you."

Abby's eyes twinkled at him as she nodded vigorously, and said "Okay, okay. Abby promises. Now…what's up?"

***

Gibbs walked into the office that morning to find Tony and Ziva hunched over Ziva's desk, Tony talking animatedly, Ziva listening with unexpectedly rapt attention. Stopping just short of their workspace, Gibbs heard Tony say "…believe he finally grew a pair."

Ziva shrugged. "I, for one, am relieved. IF someone did not do something about it soon, it would have become so tense in here that the whole team would have suffered from the…" she fumbled for a word, and then, frustrated, said "well, the whole team would have suffered, anyway. It is good for them to get it out of their pistons."

"Systems," said Tony. "It's good to get it out of their systems. I think someone should publish a Ziva David dictionary, for reference purposes. Mandatory reading for any new NCIS agents." After a moment's consideration, he added, "get it out of their pistons…that just sounds dirty."

Ziva, prudently, didn't say anything about Tony's new publication idea. Instead, she looked thoughtful for a moment, before asking "how are you going to manage not to tease him about it until Friday?"

"Simple." Tony grinned. "I'm not. I have until Friday to tease him all I want to about the date, and then after I find out what happened on the date, I'll get to tease him even more about that. It's like Christmas came early."

Ziva was disapproving. "Now Tony," she admonished him, "You should be eager for this to go well. McGee deserves to have a little bit of fun, and so does Abby. They have been playing with each other back and forth for a very long time now, and I think it would be best for everyone if you left McGee alone in order to give him time to sort out how he's going to handle it."

"Yeah…" Tony frowned, nodding at her. "you've got a point, there. That Abby of ours is definitely one hard woman to handle." Noting Ziva's suddenly curious look, he added quickly, "not that I'd know from personal experience. I mean, I just assume…she's gotta be difficult. Just look at her." Perhaps for the sake of changing the subject, Tony asked, "how do you think the boss is gonna take the idea of McGee and Abby hooking up again? You don't think he'll see that as damaging to the overall flow of the team? You know, a problem with their working relationship? They do say that co-workers…"

Gibbs walked away from the conversation. He wasn't particularly interested in hearing Tony's ideas about whether or not workplace relationships were a good idea. Gibbs himself knew that they were not at all good ideas, but that had alarmingly little to do with his objection to McGee having asked Abby out. As the father figure that she had claimed to see him as, Gibbs was protective of his little girl. As the man that Gibbs wanted Abby to see him as, he was possessive of her as a woman. In different ways, neither of those feelings seemed appropriate under the circumstances, but lately, Gibbs had been having a little more trouble than usual with subduing his feelings…particularly about her.


	2. Offense

**Chapter Two – Offense**

Later that afternoon, when Gibbs stepped out of the elevator on the lower level, Doctor Donald Mallard was standing there waiting for him. "Jethro? I need a word."

Ducky was wearing one of his more severe expressions, the kind that somehow always managed to make Gibbs, despite all of his age and experience, feel like a poorly behaved schoolboy. Gibbs raised an eyebrow at him.

"Waiting to ambush me, Duck? Must be pretty important. Could have just called me into the lab."

Ducky shook his head. "I could not," he said distinctly, "have just 'called you into the lab,' because I'm relatively certain that you wouldn't have come. For some reason of your own, you've been avoiding me rather successfully all day." Gibbs opened his mouth to speak, but Ducky put up an impatient hand to forestall him. "Be that as it may, it is not what I came here to discuss with you."

"Well?" Gibbs was trying to be patient.

"I came here," continued Ducky, "to make a suggestion. You and I could both say, although I'm aware of the fact that you probably won't, that the last couple of weeks have been a bit…unusual. Let us say, they have put a certain strain on you, and, coincidentally, have been putting a strain on those who know you well. Whether or not you agree with me, I have always considered myself close enough to your heart to have learned over the years how to determine when you are out of sorts, and for the past two weeks, you have been distinctly ruffled."

"It's nothing," said Gibbs, almost mechanically. "Haven't been sleeping very well."

Ducky nodded, smiling just a little. "No doubt," he agreed. "the sighs of a forsaken lover hardly make for good sleeping habits."

Gibbs gave Ducky a long, searching look. The doctor was smiling, but not maliciously. It was more like a secretive smile, a subtle outward sign of Ducky's inward celebration at having solved the mystery. "You're dreaming, Duck," he said, making as if to move off down the hall. Ducky stepped around to stand in front of him, blocking his way.

"I'm not," he said, no longer smiling, "you are, and your unwillingness to admit it even to yourself is frankly alarming. It's one thing when the only one you can hurt is yourself, and heaven knows you do a wonderful job of that on a regular basis, but this situation is slightly different. You have the power to injure both yourself and her, and that I cannot allow. I'm surprised you're willing to allow it. If you really cared for her-!"

Gibbs cut him off, more angrily than he'd expected to. "It has nothing to do with not caring. Hell, the most thoughtful, considerate thing I can do is to leave her as alone as possible under the circumstances. Anything else would be ill advised and frankly insane. Of the two of us, she at least seems to have a handle on what's appropriate and what's not."

"You wouldn't have said that two weeks ago," Ducky reminded him, more gently. "And by the way, Jethro, are we ever going to get around to using the lady's name?"

No, thought Gibbs. If possible, he planned on never using her name in the context of this kind of a conversation. She had made her preferences clear, and even if she hadn't, it would be his responsibility to make sure that she made the best choices. As long as he was able to see clearly enough to determine that, he was going to seperate her identity from any romantic ideas, and a name was an important marker of identity, no matter what Romeo may have said. There. After all, Romeo had been an idiot…perhaps a fictional idiot, but an excellent lesson to those individuals who wanted to try to avoid a bunch of disastrous, overromantic crap, nonetheless.

"Abigail," said Ducky. "Abby to her friends, of which you are one…or must I remind you of that as well?"

Gibbs glared at him.

"As her friend," insisted Ducky, "it is your responsibility-!"

"I know what my responsibility is, damnit," Gibbs shot at him, trying unsuccessfully to keep his voice under control. "My responsibility is to protect her from lecherous, greedy, scary older men. Men of any kind, in fact, who she doesn't want around. My responsibility is to respect her wishes and to make sure she stays as far away from trouble as I can, both as her boss, and as her friend. You say you know me pretty well, Duck. Okay, I think you do. I think you know exactly how much trouble it would be to be any closer than she is to someone like me. I think you know how many of these things I've screwed up, and just exactly how capable I am of making someone's life miserable. Just-!"

"Just," interrupted Ducky, "about as miserable as you make yourself."

There was a silence. Ducky wasn't looking at Gibbs, but instead at something apparently fascinating in the paint cracks on the wall.

"With all due respect, Jethro," murmured Ducky, after several moments of quiet, "I think it is time that you grew up."

Surprised, Gibbs stared at him.

"All of this groaning and struggling of yours," said Ducky, "this insistence that you're unloveable and unredeemable…I think it's been a long time since you've really tried. I also think that you've gotten so used to sabotaging yourself with these self centered convictions that you've missed an important opportunity to give Abby some credit of her own. You can't hide the fact that you're getting scared behind that insistently stoic exterior of yours forever." After a moment's hesitation, he added, "No, perhaps you can. But I think if you do, you'll be more than disappointed. I certainly know that I will."

Ducky obviously did not want to leave on that note. Gibbs could see in his face that he had been hoping for some further closure, maybe another angry outburst. When it became clear that Gibbs wasn't planning on being any more communicative, Ducky sighed, and stepped back into the elevator. As the doors closed in front of him, Gibbs could see Ducky's eyes on him, watching him hopefully, expectantly. It made him feel queasy. Turning away, he headed down the hall.


	3. Brush Off

**Chapter Three: Brush Off**

Abby was singing. It didn't happen often, because she knew very well, and had come to terms with the fact that she didn't have much of a voice. She wasn't exactly tone-deaf, but, as Ducky put it, lacked a certain sense of the melodic. She had witnessed other members of the team wrinkling their noses and plugging their ears on previous occasions, but today, she was in too good of a mood to care. Feeling productive and accomplished was one thing, but today was different. All day, Abby had felt sexy, and that was rare enough for a woman who spent almost all of her time interacting with bloody implements and unfeeling pieces of hardware.

As she belted the undecipherable lyrics along with one of her favorite tracks, Abby heard the elevator doors open, and turned expectantly to see Gibbs preparing to stride through the lab doorway. "Hi Gibbs!" She waved enthusiastically at him. "Right on time, as usual!"

Gibbs didn't look as though he was feeling nearly as upbeat as she was. The circles under his eyes had gotten deeper, and the smile he awarded her upon entering was grim at best. Abby had spent almost the last two weeks trying not to notice the obvious change in Gibbs' face, hoping that if she didn't think too hard about it, the mortification she'd felt upon misguidedly declaring her love for him would eventually fade. She hadn't expected the rest of the team to have remained in the dark about the incident, but, somehow or other, nobody else seemed to have guessed her and Gibbs' little secret. She knew she could count on him not to go shouting around about it, but Abby was a bad liar; her face tended to give things away. As silent as he could be, at the moment, Gibbs' face seemed to be doing even a better job of telling tales than even hers usually did.

She desperately didn't want him to still be angry, and was even less thrilled with the idea that he'd forgiven her, but was still intensely uncomfortable. If Abby could have had her way, the entire incident never would have happened. Since she was usually able to get her way, this experience was an unpleasantly unusual one, and she secretly wanted to beg Gibbs to tell her the truth about whether or not things would ever really return to the way they'd used to be. If not, she almost wanted him to get angry, or yell, or call her all sorts of violently slutty names. At least then she wouldn't have to wonder about what was going on in that brooding head of his.

"Yeah?" Gibbs was cool, extremely collected. Abby tried to focus on how exceedingly normal his voice sounded, and not on the look in his eyes. "What've you got?"

"I've pulled the prints off of the knife you and Ziva found at the crime scene." She bit her lip. "You're not gonna like this, but it's not a match. I mean, it's not a match to our suspect."

"Well." Gibbs sounded so calm and so patient that Abby wanted to kick him. "Who do they match?"

"Victim's wife." Abby sighed. "Cherchez la femme, it's the same in all the great detective stories. When the author can't think of a good way to end the book, you know it's gonna be the wife…or the girlfriend, or the boyfriend…or the lover…sometimes a secret lover…so I guess it's more 'cherchez l'amour,' or something like that, but you know what I'm getting at."

Gibbs nodded.

Abby glared. She didn't exactly glare _at_ Gibbs, because that would be inadvisable. Instead, she glared just past his ear at a spot on the wall, which hadn't done anything to her, but would be forced to accept her misdirected frustration anyway. As she was boring a hole in the wall with her eyes, however, Abby realized that she had a defensive weapon that she hadn't even thought about using. She had a date this Friday, and Gibbs probably didn't know about it yet. Maybe if he found out, he'd stop worrying about her being stuck on him, and tensions between the two of them would ease enough for her to start winning his sympathies back. Turning back to him, a new smile on her face, Abby asked him, "can I ask a question?"  
"You just did," Gibbs informed her, "but if it's quick, you can ask another one."

"It's a very personal question." Abby waited for his response, but Gibbs just nodded, encouraging her. "Okay." She folded her hands primly in her lap, looked up mischievously at him, and asked, "what does a woman have to do to make you think that she looks sexy?"

Gibbs was apparently a little bit taken aback by the question. More than a little bit, thought Abby, as she watched him open his mouth slightly, take in a quick, harsh little breath, and then close it again. After a moment, he exhaled again, and looked for a moment as though he was seriously considering Abby's question. She decided to give him a little help.

"Cause you see," she began, "Tim and I are going out this Friday. On a date. I mean, a real, not-just-friends-but-kinda-sorta-friends-but-mostly-not-as-friends date. At a nice restaurant. He asked me this morning, and Tony says that it's about time, but I guess I never figured that he'd actually…still be interested in something like that. I mean, I know that he and I…well, that he has a bit of a…" She blushed a little, and tried to get herself back onto ground where she felt comfortable. "That is," she repeated, "I know that he has a bit of a thing for me, still, but I figured it would stay that way. Just a little crush, you know. Anyway, he says we're going somewhere very fancy, and that I should get dressed up, and I wanted to know what the most attractive thing about a woman is, so that I can…try to emphasize it, I guess. And don't say something vulgar. Not, of course," she added hastily, "that you would say something vulgar, but you might think that he might, and…you shouldn't. Because Tim's a very sweet guy, really."

Gibbs took a moment to process her litany of disconnected thoughts, looking at her through searching eyes that had suddenly gone a little glassy. It occurred to her that maybe Gibbs did not want to be personally aware of any romantic liaisons between members of his team, and she wondered for a moment if maybe, she'd only made his opinion of her even worse than it already was. After a moment, however, Gibbs sighed.

"Well," he said, "I can't speak to what McGee would be the most…interested in. All I know is that a woman is the most beautiful when she's feeling good and confident about herself. Shouldn't be a problem for you, Abs. You've got lots to be confident about."

He turned slowly and walked back towards the elevator. Abby watched him go, feeling the warm, fuzzy sensation creep through her bones that always overtook her when she received any sort of compliment from Gibbs. Maybe it really all was going to be okay. It would just take a little bit of time to heal the bond. Everything good, after, all, took a little bit of time. She could wait. Probably. She would try, at least, to be able to wait.

***

Gibbs was standing outside of Ducky's home when the doctor came to answer the doorbell at 9 o'clock that evening. Upon opening the door and finding him there, Ducky didn't seem at all surprised. Instead he smiled one of his small, knowing smiles, and ushered Gibbs in to the main foyer.

"Well," asked Ducky, "what can I do for you? Have you come to tell me that you've changed your mind, or is this just a social call?"

Gibbs threw his hands out in front of him, and then let them fall to his sides in a defeated gesture. Ducky nodded.

"Well," he said, "whether or not you've come to encourage my advice, I hope you'll join me for some dinner." He moved off through the hall and into the dining room. As he went, he called over his shoulder, "you know, you really are in very good hands. It may not be a matter of public record, but I was quite the Don Juan in my younger days…"

Gibbs stared after him. Suddenly fighting back an irresistible urge to grin, he followed him, saying, "Yeah, Duck…I don't doubt it."


	4. Take Off

**Author's Note: This chapter, in which Ducky justifies Gibbs' lack of manliness, is for STLfan. **

**Best,**

**Vivian**

**Chapter Four: Take Off**

"After a good deal of consideration," Ducky was saying, having delicately both chewed and swallowed a bite of steak, "I've decided that I both forgive and sympathize with you."

"Yeah?" Gibbs looked up from his own dinner, of which he had managed to finish very little.

"Originally, I was under the impression that you were – and it seems a strange phrase to utter in reference to your heroic self – rather frightened by the idea of a romance with a much younger woman."

Gibbs muttered indistinctly to indicate his opinion of that idea.

Ducky beamed over at his disgruntled friend. "But I seem to have been mistaken. Mr. Palmer, who is an irritatingly astute judge of both character and interpersonal dynamic, appears to have chosen your side over mine."

Gibbs closed his eyes, swallowed a bite, and attempted to keep his voice perfectly calm as he asked "You told Palmer?"

"Certainly not." Ducky was indignant. "I posed for him a hypothetically scenario in which two individuals were suffering from the feelings and were placed in the predicament that you and Abigail find yourselves in, and I asked him to, in the spirit of a psychological exercise, explain to me their various motivations. He is not a perfect scientist, because emotions and personal interests do tend to taint his impression of things. Then again, it is a natural human flaw, showing emotion. You are, in my experience so far, the only man capable of truly giving the impression that you have no soul."

Gibbs knew that he was probably supposed to feel chastised, or even somewhat ashamed. Instead, he was beginning to get very annoyed. This entire scenario was becoming more and more ridiculous by the moment. "You want to hear some feelings?" Gibbs asked, not quite slamming his fork down on the table. "Okay. I feel like a kid who's friends are passing notes to his crush and talking behind his back next to the lockers. It's absurd. It's degrading. It's also-!"

"-not every day that we get to feel young. You should enjoy it." Ducky was unperturbed. "Love has a magical way of making us feel remarkably like children."

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Ducky's silence was a pleasant, companionable one. Gibbs' silence was the silence of a man trying hard to control his rising temper.

"What I originally began to say," continued Ducky eventually, "is that Mr. Palmer believes that he understands your motivations for keeping silence. You're a man in control, and the man in charge of a situation should never be permitted to take advantage of it. Identifying Abby as an object of desire, and pursuing that desire would, I think, be something that you would consider 'taking advantage' of your position."

"Something like that." Gibbs forked more steak.

"If you're interested," continued Ducky, "I have something else for you to take advantage of, while you're busy preparing to stomach the idea of pursuing one of your underlings."

Gibbs did not like the idea of his team being his "underlings." At the same time, they weren't exactly his equals in the workplace, and they weren't exactly his equals in experience. He still couldn't, or wouldn't, think of them as his inferiors. It was a complicated psychological classification. Gibbs continued to pour over all this in order to keep himself from envisioning the more pleasing and significantly less appropriate connotations of Abby Sciuto being "under" him.

Ducky said, "she's a romantic."

"Yeah. I know." Gibbs pushed some mashed potatoes around.

"The pedestal on which she has placed you is by no means totally unreachable. You must appeal to her sense of the way things ought to be, the fairytale unreality that Abby feels should really exist in the world. The kind of woman who takes as great a pleasure as she does in re-uniting lost family members and repairing broken interpersonal bonds would melt helplessly in the face of the devotion of a prince charming such as yourself." After a moment's hesitation, Ducky frowned, nodded, and then said "actually, you're less of a prince charming and more of a byronic hero."

Gibbs chuckled darkly. "Alluring and ultimately destructive," he said. Ducky seemed surprised, which was again slightly frustrating. For some reason no one ever seemed to believe that he had actually read a book or had picked up a spot of culture. For all the supposed respect he got, he seemed to be expected far too often to be an ill-educated Neanderthal.

"Actually," Ducky was saying, "I was thinking more the mysterious, strong silent type. Not all byronic heroes destroy things. Think of Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester. A man damaged by a broken love affair, who ultimately displays his passionate desire to be healed. He, too, was enamoured of one of his employees."

"You thinking of writing a book, Duck? I think McGee's beat you to it."

Ducky laughed. "Ah, yes. The chronicles of the excellent LJ Tibbs." Smiling, he began to clear the plates. "I wouldn't care to infringe upon his creative territory. My story, Jethro, is going to be a love story."

***

It was already almost midnight when Gibbs appeared on Abby's doorstep. Unlike Ducky, Abby looked very surprised when she found her boss standing in front of the house. After looking surprised for a second or two, she almost immediately decided to be worried instead.

"Gibbs!" Running out to meet him, she grabbed him by both arms and looked searchingly into his face. "Are you okay? Is everybody okay?"

Very gently, he removed her hands, taking a moment to squeeze each of them in his before letting them drop back to her sides. "As far as I know, everything's fine. You can breathe, now."

Abby did breathe. After letting out a long relieved sigh, she cocked her head at him and asked, puzzled, "then…if everything's okay, what are you doing at my house?"

"It's…" he fumbled for a phrase, and then, taking, as he often had recently, a cue from Ducky, announced, "it's just a social call, Abs. Can I come in?"


	5. Offer

**Chapter Five: Offer**

Abby bustled around a bit with glasses in the kitchen, looking flustered and excited all at the same time. Gibbs, taking a quiet seat the table, watched her in some amusement as she inspected and finally selected what was apparently a clean glass from one of the counters. "What can I get ya?" she asked him, brandishing the glass at him and gesturing towards the refrigerator. "Coffee?"

Gibbs remembered what Abby's coffee of choice tasted like. It was obviously designed more for caffeine overdosing than for appreciation of flavor. "Glass of water," he said, and Abby went to pour him one from the tap. When she passed it to him, he took a few sips in contemplative silence, watching Abby grow more and more fidgety and agitated.

"Ducky says I should have brought you flowers," he remarked, shrugging his shoulders, taking his eyes off of Abby to watch the tabletop. "I probably would have, but…I'm just not floral kind of a guy. Never considered that a bad thing until now. Duck'll be disappointed in me. He says it's all about softening the-!"

Inevitably, Abby broke, and, in a half-panicky, half-determined voice, she said, "okay, I know why you're here."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow at her. "You do?"  
"Yes." Abby took a deep breath. " I know that things have been weird between us, and you always look at me funny when you come into the lab…not that your look is funny, and not, like, funny ha-ha, but like, funny disturbing, like I'm somebody different that you haven't made up your mind about yet, and it's awful, because I'm not, I'm your Abby, and….and I think…you're here because you're still upset about what happened when I came…to see you at your house a couple of weeks ago, and you're having trouble working with me."

After considering that for a moment, Gibbs nodded. "Something like that," he confirmed.

Abby's eyes widened. "I don't…I don't know what else to tell you," she said, breaking away from the table and pacing back over to the counter. Turning back to him, she added, "I've explained myself, I've apologized, I've said everything that I could possibly-!"

Gibbs just nodded. "Yeah," he said, leaning back in the chair and trying to make himself a little more comfortable. "Yeah, I know you have."

Abby gazed helplessly at him. "Then what do you want me to do?"

"I want you to sit down." With one final swig, Gibbs finished off his glass of water, and gestured in front of him at an unoccupied chair. Slowly, nervously, Abby sunk into it. "I want," continued Gibbs, once Abby was seated, "to tell you something, because I think I owe it to you."

"Owe me? You don't owe me anything." For some reason, that didn't seem to make Abby feel any better. If anything, she looked even more freaked out.

"You're wrong." Gibbs was drawling, patient. Everything seemed to have slowed down a bit for him, was making more sense than it had in the recent past. Knowing, for him, always made things a little less terrifying, and now he knew that he was going to go through with it, no matter how his previously churning insides felt about that decision. It was an inevitable certainty. That felt okay. "I owe it to you to tell you the truth. I don't think I feel like your father anymore."

He knew as soon as he'd said it that his set up was cruel. Abby's face hardened, then seemed to almost twist in on itself as she bit her lip and tried desperately not to start to cry. Looking away from him, she swallowed, hard, and then said, still not meeting his eyes, "I…I understand."

"No, I'm pretty sure you don't." Gibbs leaned forward across the table at her, but she moved away from him almost instinctively. "A lot of things have changed in the past few days," he continued gently, "and I know that you're ready to believe that you and I are close enough as family that there's no room for any other feelings. I think it makes you happier to think that way, because it takes you out of territory where our respect for each other might be compromised. You've got the whole thing figured out in your head. You're satisfied with your picture of how the two of us connect." He shook his head. "Trouble is, Abs, I'm not."

Abby half-turned her head back towards him, with a rapt but otherwise unreadable expression on her face. Gibbs, usually the master of the inscrutable look, tried to not to think too hard about what it was that was going on inside her jumbled mind. Instead, he kept talking, still gently, but inexorably, forcing himself to keep speaking in the same level and unobtrusive tones. "I know that there are other things that you're working on figuring out this week. I know that I'm intruding, and that this is coming at an undesirable time. I'm not going to interfere with that. You're a woman who is very capable of making her own decisions, and I want them to be no one's but yours to make. I just want you to reconsider them. That's all I'm asking."

Standing up, he walked around to the other side of the table, and put a hand on Abby's shoulder. Although she flinched a little, she didn't jerk away from him, which was encouraging, almost. Gibbs leaned in and gave her a soft kiss on the cheek, then on the side of the face, moving slowly up to kiss her forehead, then her closed eyelids. When he straightened up to step away from her, Abby's eyelids were still shut, her mouth very slightly open.

"Think about it," he said, and headed for the door.

***

On Wednesday morning, Gibbs had a problem. He had thought that he'd be perfectly able to handle McGee. After all, McGee was generally not that difficult to handle, even for Tony. When Gibbs and McGee intercepted each other outside the elevator, however, Gibbs got a cold, nasty feeling in his stomach.

There was something about making a play for another man's girl that didn't feel right, even when the other man was, as Ducky had so unfortunately phrased it, Gibbs' inferior. McGee deserved respect, and Gibbs was ready and willing to give it to him. McGee deserved to have his private life be just that, private, and Gibbs was ready and willing to allow that as well. Somehow or other, though, Gibbs had managed to trespass, both into his agent's personal life and against his warranted respect. Ruefully, he remembered afresh, as he had several times recently, why it was that he had promised himself time and time again that he would stay away from workplace relationships.

"Morning, boss!" said McGee, smiling with uncharacteristic exuberance.

"Morning." Gibbs decided he wasn't going to think about it. Even as he did so, little voice in the back of his head remarked that it would be easier said than done.


	6. Put Off

**Chapter Six – Put Off **

Abby was very good at following directions, and so she thought about what Gibbs had said…and even more so about what he had done. She spent the entirety of Wednesday, in fact, sitting in her lab and thinking through the way that he had looked, the way he'd formed his words, and the way that his formerly fatherly kisses had felt…different. Passionate. Lingering. She could feel them lingering on her skin.

Maybe it was that lingering feeling of longing that finally called Abby to arms. It took a whole day, but by Thursday morning, Abby had made a decision. Before solidifying her decision and calming her doubts, however ,she had something important to do, someone important she had to talk to. Gathering her courage to her and her wits about her, Abby marched up the stairs, and confronted McGee where he was sitting at his desk.

By some gift of providence, Ziva and Tony were nowhere to be found. Neither was Gibbs, although Abby had suspected that her boss had been intentionally giving her plenty of space since their last meeting, and was unlikely to make a lengthy appearance any time soon. For a brief moment, she had a sickening feeling of being in control, and was fascinated by the idea that Gibbs might be too concerned with her own response to her to be able to come and see her. The idea was fleeting. Abby soon realized that the far more likely possibility was that Gibbs had decided that she deserved a bit of time to think things through, and was gallantly granting it to her.

"Tim?" Abby sat down in Tony's chair, crossed her arms over her chest, and got straight to the point. "Do you remember when I asked you, maybe two or three weeks ago, if you knew what it was like to know that you can't have something, but to think that maybe you could have it, except you don't really know that you can't have it, and when you-!"

"Yes." McGee cut her off before she had a chance to get too confusing with her self-contradictions. "I remember. Why?"

"Do you remember what you said?"

Abby remembered very clearly what McGee had said. He had given her one of the most unsatisfactory answers she'd ever had to suffer through, and somehow, because of that answer, she'd made a decision that had taken this whole situation in a direction that spun it wildly out of control. Only McGee could make all of this make sense again. Briefly, and a bit guiltily, Abby reflected on how ironic that was.

McGee was nodding. "I remember," he told her. "I said that sometimes you just had to let yourself accept that something couldn't happen."

"And…" Abby had unconsciously slid forward to the edge of her chair, and was grabbing on to the seat with both tightly clenched hands. "did you mean it, when you said that?"

Shaking his head, McGee shrugged. "Honestly? No, I didn't." Seeing the surprise on Abby's face, he added, "I just thought that you needed to hear someone tell you that you couldn't, so that you'd convince yourself that you could. A little bit of reverse psychology."

Abby didn't know whether to slug him, or to kiss him. When she'd had a couple of moments to collect her suddenly wildly excited thoughts, she compromised by reaching over and giving McGee a big hug that almost pulled him out of his chair and into her lap. "Thank you, Timmy," she told him, giving him a little squeeze. She thought about telling him that he'd actually almost screwed everything up for her, but somehow she was feeling too charitable at the moment to think of adding anything negative. After all, now it was going to work out perfectly. Everything really was going to be okay. The idea of being close to Gibbs again was so overpoweringly pleasurable that Abby felt dizzy, relieved and exhilarated at the same time, like a huge weight she hadn't even been aware of was suddenly and unexpectedly gone. For some reason, it made her wonder if she ought to actually lose a few pounds.

"Why," asked McGee slowly, "do I get the sense that this hug is a consolation prize?"

Abby deflated slightly. "Well," she said, choosing her words as carefully as she could, "I guess that's…one way of putting it."

***

On Friday night, Gibbs left work feeling queasy. He was not a man with a terribly overactive imagination, and yet he couldn't help but wonder, as the hours ticked on, where Abby was and who she was…that is, what she was doing. When he arrived on Ducky's doorstep at nine o'clock, he was starting to wonder what it was that he was going to tell the good doctor, who would no doubt want to know how his pet love story was progressing.

The truth was that Gibbs didn't want to talk about it anymore. He didn't even want to think about it. The pressure of running the same scenarios over in his mind had worn him down after several days, and he would have been the happiest to have been left to his own devices, and to have gone to an early bed. Still, when Ducky had called him up, and asked him to come over, there had been no way around it. He owed his doctor a great deal, both as a co-worker, and recently as a very patient, if a bit of a meddling friend.

Jordan came to open the door for Gibbs, smiling one of her warm, welcoming smiles as she directed him inside. "Donny told me you'd be coming by, tonight," she said to him, escorting him into the living room. "It's been a long time, Jethro. You shouldn't be such a stranger."

Gibbs said something gracious and generic, moving past Jordan to sit down across from Ducky in the living room. Ducky smiled. "Good evening, Jethro. You don't, I'm sorry to say, look terribly happy to see me."

"What can I do for you?" Gibbs asked, pointedly bypassing the pleasantries. Ducky glanced over at Jordan, and sighed.

"As a matter of fact," the doctor murmured apologetically, "I can't really claim that there's anything that you may do for me, at the moment. Nor, I'm afraid, is there anything that either Jordan or myself might do for you. The position you're in requires that you help yourself, and I have opened my home to you in the hopes that you might do just that."

This litany of Ducky's made, at first ,absolutely no sense. Gibbs gazed at him for a few seconds, expecting him to clarify it. While Gibbs and Ducky were looking at each other, the front door creaked open, and both men turned their heads to see Jordan admitting Abby Sciuto into the house.

Abby was glowing. She was disheveled and flushed, with strands of hair escaping from her braids, and yet when she looked up to thank Jordan, Gibbs could see the attractively vibrant expression on her face. Ducky stood up to greet her, crossing over to take her by the hands and lead her into the living room. Long before she made it there, Abby saw Gibbs, and stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes widening. She took in a sharp breath as all the color left her face ,and then returned, now a deeper shade of red than it had been before. Gibbs stood up, and as crossed over to where Abby had stopped, Ducky stepped back and went to join Jordan by the door.

"I thought maybe I ought to wear a dress," Abby was saying, the words coming out in a hushed jumble as though she were just using them to take up the silent space between herself and Gibbs. "Ducky said I should wear something nice, but I don't…I didn't know what would be…well, 'nice,' and I spent so long trying to figure out what you'd like the best, that I-!"

Gibbs reached around her with one arm, pulled her body against his, and kissed her. With the other hand he reached up to press his fingers into hair, while her heart beat double time against his chest. It took her a moment, but finally she responded as fully as he'd tried not to envision that she would. Her lips moved against his, her hands flattened themselves against the tense muscles of his back, and all of the longing and the frustration that had been building up during the several days of back and forth between them seemed to rush out into that moment of incomprehensibly satisfying connection.

In the very back of his mind, Gibbs knew that Ducky was probably wearing a very smug look on his face. For some reason, that image made him laugh, and when he finally broke away from Abby, he started to chuckle as he moved his lips along the curve between neck and shoulder, just above where her sweater began.

"What's so funny?" asked Abby quietly, still a little breathless.

Gibbs just shook his head.


	7. Off Chance

**Chapter Seven – Off Chance**

Sometime later that evening, Abby found herself curled up on Ducky's couch, tucked comfortably into Gibbs' arms. The firm way in which he held her implied that he had no intention of ever letting her leave that couch again, and for the moment, Abby was completely content to pretend as though she never would. As the hours began to slide by, however, the four of them all listening dreamily to Ducky's mint recording of "La Traviata," Abby's brain began to function against her will. Tomorrow would be Saturday, and the day after that, Sunday, but then, on Monday, all of this would have to be faced, and she'd be making a totally new kind of report to her variously curious colleagues. It wasn't even the prospect of telling McGee that bothered her. Somehow, she imagined that he already knew. It would be like McGee to be one step ahead of her when it came to this kind of thing. For all that he'd been…well, royally screwed by the whole blissful scenario, McGee was, as she'd told Gibbs faithfully only two days before, a really nice guy. Telling Tony and Ziva was another thing entirely, particularly when it came to Ziva. Tony would be aghast at first, then delighted, then unbearably nosy…but Abby was used to him acting like a twelve year old. Ziva, on the other hand, would be disapproving, coldly uncommunicative, and…

"You're thinking," murmured Gibbs, his lips brushing against the top of her head as he spoke into her hair, which had, at some point, come out of its braids and now hung down around her shoulders. Vaguely, Abby remembered Gibbs sliding off her hair ties and tenderly running his large fingers through the snarled strands. "What's to think about?"

"Everything," whispered Abby, more to herself than to anyone else, but she knew that Gibbs heard her. He shifted a bit beneath her, and she saw Ducky and Jordan look up from a conversation they'd been engaged in on the other side of the room. When he'd gotten himself a little more comfortable on the sofa, Gibbs gave her an encouraging squeeze with one of his already entangled arms.  
"Yeah," he said, letting go of a sigh that was half contented and half disappointed. "Yeah, everything's gonna be a pain in the ass to sort out on Monday." To Abby's surprise, he didn't sound too worried about it. Craning her neck around, she tried to get a glimpse of his face, but found that she couldn't make it without twisting out of his grasp, something that she wanted to avoid for as long as was humanly possible. It occurred to her for perhaps the first time that she would suffer so much less from this liaison than Gibbs would, and that she was much more likely to be seen as the victim of an inappropriate and ill-advised relationship than as any sort of culprit.

"This was a big mistake," she said, biting her lip. "Vance is gonna-!"

"Yeah." Gibbs cut her off. "Forget about it."

"I can't forget about it." Abby was insistent. She wanted to forget about it very, very badly. The moment was being ruined for her by her inability to draw her mind back from the idea that Gibbs might…that he might actually…

"I'm not gonna be fired, Abs." Gibbs lifted her slightly and turned her so that she could see the sincere expression in his newly and fascinatingly peaceful eyes. "Neither are you. You know there'll be drama, there'll be reprimands, and DiNozzo is probably gonna have a field day. If anything gets out of hand-!"

"Don't tell me you're gonna take the blame," said Abby fiercely. "Don't you dare tell me that, because if you think it's true, then you're…then you don't think as much of me as I think of you."

It took a little while before Gibbs responded. He looked away for a moment, focusing his attention on Ducky, who was laughing at something that Jordan had apparently said. Following his gaze, Abby watched as Jordan and Ducky walked over to change the disk, which had apparently stopped playing while Abby was distracted by her realization about the jeopardy her job was in. When Jordan reached out to remove the disk, Ducky placed his hand on top of hers, and Abby suddenly felt like an intruder in someone else's beautiful moment.

Gibbs next words gave her a perfectly rapturous moment of her own. "You," he murmured, his voice deeply serious, "mean the world to me."

***

After Gibbs and Abby had left together in Gibbs' car, Ducky and Jordan cleared up the remains of their makeshift dinner. Ducky was silent for a long time, but Jordan didn't attempt to engage him in conversation until he suddenly shook his head and announced, "I want to believe that it's going to be easy, now."

"Nothing really wonderful," insisted Jordan as she placed a glass in the dishwasher, "is ever easy." A slow, sly smile spread across her face as she added, "and don't you say that I was easy, because I promise you that I won't take it the way that it's intended."

Ducky laughed. "I would never, my dear," he said, drawing her to him with one arm, "for a moment consider our…courtship to have been easy. Murders and misdiagnoses are hardly-!"

"You don't have to rub it in." Jordan's smile was still on her face, and there was a teasing note in her voice that gave the lie to her indignation.

After staring at her for a moment, Ducky released her, and returned to the table to gather and remove the used napkins. "I want so badly," he said quietly, "for him to be happy. It would be such…a really pleasant change. In his life as well as in mine."

Jordan shrugged. "You said it yourself, she reminded him. "The only one who can help Gibbs is…Gibbs."

Ducky wanted to be wrong. He liked the idea that this time Abby would be able to help Gibbs make his own world a little bit of a better place. Looking affectionately at Jordan, he was reminded that companionship could go a long way towards lifestyle improvement. A very, very long way.

**Author's note: There is a third fic in this series, one that I have already started to work on writing. It will involve a little more action, more scenes with the rest of the team, and some dramatic difficulties with Jackson Gibbs, Mike Franks, and Franks' newly adopted family. My question for you is…should I post it here? **

**All my best,**

**Vivian**


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